A Room Full of Heretics
by sinemoras09
Summary: AU. Adam isn't dead. Takes place around Season 2. No spoilers.


.

_._

After the shock, the first thing he feels is pain. Blood and bone begins to reconstitute itself, the dust and dirt swirling and stretching into shape. His mind forces itself to consciousness. _I'm alive. I'm alive! Bloody hell, I'm still alive..._

Adam groans, and claws his way to the foot of the hospital bed.

xXx

.

They all think he's dead. Adam is content to let them keep believing.

Above him, the night sky rolls across the city, behind squat fat buildings and neon signs. Pieces of discarded newspaper lie at Adam's feet, and in the dark, he can just barely make out the soiled black-and-white newsprint, JAY'S FURNITURE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE in big bold letters.

It's cold, and his skin is still raw from the hours before. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he tries to comprehend the events that lead him here: how Arthur had grabbed his arm and sucked him dry; how he fell, a pile of ash and bone, everything inside of him crumbling like so much dust. It was sheer will that brought him back, stubbornness and indignation that forced his body to remember the power that had been stolen from him. _Out from the ashes_, Adam thinks. The highway traffic falls to a dull blur, and the halos of cars seem to edge around the city in front of him.

xXx

.

"I need a room. I assume you have the accommodations," Adam says. The kid at the check-out teller stares at him, glassy-eyed and chewing the side of his cheek.

2 AM, and the only place open is a godforsaken motel in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Adam reaches into his wallet where he (miraculously) manages to procure a bit of cash-400 years of wandering the streets makes for ample pick-pocketing, and Mr. Doug Jones of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, didn't notice a thing. The kid blinks. "This isn't enough," the kid says.

"The deuce do you mean? It's fifty for the night, this is a fifty," Adam says.

"It's fifty down to reserve a room, another fifty to use it," the kid says. "It's a hundred total. You can put it on your credit card if you want."

"I haven't any credit cards," Adam says, and before he's tempted to use a stolen credit card where he can be tracked and found, he secretly palms off Mr. Doug Jone's wallet into the potted palm behind him. The whole mess of it is utterly infuriating. "For god's sakes, say something," Adam says.

"Maybe you should go somewhere else," the kid says.

xXx

.

For once in his long long life, Adam doesn't have a plan.

Adam stumbles. The muscles in his legs are still weak. _Come on_, Adam thinks. Still in the grips of Arthur's power, he feels it like a poison seeping him dry; if he doesn't concentrate, there's still the risk that he may crumble into dust. The whole of it is utterly exhausting. He wonders idly if he should attempt hot-wiring one of the many cars parallel parked at the side of the street. Lord knows a decent automobile would be an improvement over walking. There is, however, the tricky thing about getting _caught_, and as Adam is still pretending to be Very Much Dead, he decides it's probably not in his best interest to risk it.

He remembers the first time he saw his first car. Back then, automobiles were slower than horses, sputtering and moving in inelegant jerks. They were ridiculous things, overwrought metal beasts that hulked down the road and teetered along the riverbanks, more novelty than practical.

If he were a man prone to sentimentality, he would block out from his memory how riding a horse and carriage, while environmentally friendly and cringingly romantic, was a rather cumbersome ordeal in its own right, how the dirt roads would be paved with horse shit and how housewives dumped pots of excrement out the door. Funny, his life seems to be utterly _paved_with excrement. His mouth quirks. it's a little regretful he has no one here to share it with.

Around him, a lonely car sputters in the distance, and the hush of traffic slowly dies out. _Like a candle flickering_, Adam thinks. Slowly everything around him dims, and the night seems to swallow him whole.

xXx

.

As he is wont to do in situations like this, Adam shuts his mind up by buying himself some company.

There are girls leaning against broken down doors of the abandoned factory. Adam steps forward, fingering the stolen bills in his hand. There are blondes and brunettes and trannies all lined up like pigs at the farm, and it's only until he finds the sweet-faced Vietnamese one that he stops.

"How much for a night?" Adam asks, in perfect Vietnamese.

The girl is unimpressed. She turns to the other girl, looking at her as if to say, _look at this asshole. Trying to show off_. Adam smiles and tucks a hundred dollar bill into the waistband of her shorts.

_Tokyo_. It suddenly occurs to him that he hasn't been in Japan for almost seventy years. A part of him feels his stomach sink. Pushing the feeling away, he takes the girl's hand. "What's your name?" the girl asks. Her English is more than passable.

"Kensei," Adam says. "And when I'm inside you I want you to scream my name."

The sweaty roll of hundreds is more than enough.

The thing about dying is, every time you come back, you feel a little emptier each time.

He has seen men die a thousand times; seen their faces expand and contract, the ebb of their lives slowly trickling away. He has seen dysentery and consumption, the blood-filled lungs and blood-tinged mouths and grinning death leering at him from behind. Everyone dies. Around him, the night seems colder somehow, and the thin air seems sharp against his still raw skin.

The girl is nothing but sharp angles underneath him, sticky and hot and staring up at him with dead red eyes. Bloodshot, slightly glazed. Adam shifts and turns his head away, engrossing himself with the feel of her hair, coarse and black and tangling in his fingers. Her tits are like mosquito bites and it's almost painful to touch. Decades of pent up aggression locked up in that cell come pouring out, and Adam pounds into her with abandon. "Kensei!" the girl wails. It's jarring and it's not the same, and Adam grits his teeth. "Kensei! _Kensei_!" the girl says.

Adam shoves her off. "Hey!" the girl says. She yanks the sheet over her breasts. "What's your problem?"

"Get out of here; I'm through," Adam says. The girl glares.

"Just because you fuckin got soft don't mean I don't get paid."

"On the dresser," Adam says. He peels off the condom and yanks on his clothes.

xXx

.

He blames Arthur Petrelli for his current state. It is depressing-utterly depressing!-being an immortal and having aches and pains and arthritis like a bloody geriatric. And Hiro! Locking him up in that bloody coffin for god knows how long! And if he were completely honest with himself, he knows deep inside that he is far angrier at Hiro than at anything Arthur ever could have done. All Arthur did was kill him, not unlike any of the dozens of other men he's encountered...

It suddenly occurs to him in his weakened state, Adam can for once indulge in one or more alcoholic beverages and get himself thoroughly, utterly drunk. He drums his fingertips on the tabletop, frowning. _Well why the bloody hell not?_

Desperate times, as they say.

xXx

.

A pint of vodka later, Adam's head is on the table. Unfortunately for him, his body is just strong enough to metabolize the alcohol at that precise concentration where it's not enough to get him sloshed, but it's more than enough to make his head drum like a bloody marching band. Adam cradles his head in his hands, careful to avoid any sudden movements. "You are drunk," Yaeko says.

Adam blinks. "What...?" Adam squints. Across from him, Yaeko is sitting at the table, frowning. "Fuck me, I'm hallucinating," Adam mumbles.

"You cannot fight White Beard in this state," Yaeko says. She's sitting right in front of him, still and delicate as imperial porcelain, completely incongruent with the dingy room and the naked lightbulb swinging above them. "Kensei, you must be sober. Our village is depending on you..."

The room is a tent, now; Adam is crouched on the ground, his robes half-soiled and his sword lying at his side. Gently Yaeko takes a damp cloth and wipes Adam's face. Her fingertips are soft and cool against his skin, and the scenery changes, and Adam finds himself cradled against her breast. Cherry blossoms fall and Yaeko is smiling. "I think this is what happiness is," Yaeko says, and she touches his cheek.

Funny, Adam thinks. And he had been so lonely...

Adam jerks awake. A thin watery light filters into the room, and the air smells faintly of grease and old cigarettes.

Slowly, he drags himself to the bed. The shabby mattress groans under his weight; he pulls a blanket over his face and sleeps.

xXx

.

He's thinking too much, and no good can come of that.

There's a knock at the door, and Adam has to bodily drag himself up. Everything hurts. He opens the door and the light slams into his face. He shields his eyes just enough to see again.

It's that kid again, chewing bubble gum and holding out a newspaper. "Room service?"

"I didn't order bloody room service, you've got the wrong room," Adam says, but the kid steps in.

"You're the only tenant," the kid says. "I have a note." Adam takes the note from the kid's hand. In scratchy handwriting it reads, TYLENOL + CLUB SODA + 1 BANANA IN A.M. and realizes he must have ordered it the night before. "For the hangover," Adam says. "Right."

xXx

.

He hitchhikes his way back to the airport. It has been far too long since he's seen Japan.


End file.
